Students in Florida a cappella group deliver powerful performance to honor shooting victims

Students from a highly acclaimed Tampa, Fla., high school chorus program paid respect to the victims of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting Monday morning, delivering a hauntingly beautiful performance in the school courtyard before classes began.

The Henry B. Plant High School Chorus, all dressed in white to symbolize purity and unity, gathered to sing solemnly while fellow students and teachers watched in respectful silence. Several students held up a large painted banner that read “Strength Through Unity/Students 4 Change.”

According to its website, the chorus program is the largest in the school district of Hillsborough County, currently serving more than 200 students via a variety of both auditioned and nonauditioned choral groups.

Henry B. Plant High has not only been musically outspoken in its response to the recent school shooting, but the students also took it upon themselves to make an artistic statement, covering their school’s sidewalks and courtyard with hundreds of chalk messages pleading for gun reform. “Action, not words,” “Do something,” “Enough is enough,” and “This could have been us.”